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Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology (HiMAT)

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NASA

Apr 01, 2009
Image Article
It's not often that you find an airplane in your parking space when you arrive at work. But that's what former NASA Dryden Fligh
It's not often that you find an airplane in your parking space when you arrive at work. But that's what former NASA Dryden Flight Research Center director Kevin Petersen found when he arrived at work on April 1, 2009 – the HiMAT remotely piloted research aircraft sitting in his parking slot front of Dryden's main building.

ED09-0078-21

It’s not often that you find an airplane in your parking space when you arrive at work. But that’s what former NASA Dryden Flight Research Center director Kevin Petersen found when he arrived at work on April 1, 2009 – the HiMAT remotely piloted research aircraft sitting in his parking slot front of Dryden’s main building. The sub-scale aircraft had been in storage at NASA Ames Research Center since the Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology project, on which Petersen had been a research engineer, ended in 1983. Under the leadership of Dryden’s maintenance chief Tom Grindle, the HiMAT aircraft was brought back to Dryden, cleaned up and positioned in his parking space without Petersen’s knowledge as an April Fool’s Day joke three days before his retirement from NASA.

April 1, 2009
NASA / Tony Landis